Ill. Judge To Probe Misconduct In ICE Protester Prosecution

By Lauraann Wood

Further fact-finding is necessary to determine whether any misrepresentations or inaccuracies Chicago prosecutors offered while pursuing a since-tossed criminal conspiracy case against six immigration protesters amounts to misconduct warranting contempt or sanctions consideration, an Illinois federal judge said Thursday.

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Blue States Fight EPA Rollback Of Power Plant Climate Rules

By Ganesh Setty

A New York-led coalition of mostly Democratic states and municipalities lodged a petition on Thursday before the D.C. Circuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recent repeal of Biden-era limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.

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7th Circ. Asks When Int'l Arbitration Pacts Are 'Null And Void'

By Celeste Bott

The Seventh Circuit for the first time is grappling with the grounds under which courts may determine if an international arbitration clause is null and void, with one judge questioning Thursday whether consumers should be forced to arbitrate their claims against online casino operators in Canada if Ontario law could ultimately invalidate any resulting award.

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Honeywell's $46M LNG Award Survives Delay Challenge

By Joyce Hanson

A Manhattan federal judge has granted industrial conglomerate Honeywell's bid to confirm a $46 million arbitral award, including attorney fees, against a Mexican construction company over a dispute related to defective and delayed equipment for a liquefied natural gas plant in Louisiana.

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Ex-Actavis Exec Escapes Some Drug Price-Fixing Claims

By Carla Baranauckas

A Connecticut federal judge has dismissed a swath of claims against a former executive of Actavis and Taro in the generic drug price‑fixing litigation brought by state enforcers, holding that evidence was insufficient to prove he joined several alleged single‑drug conspiracies.

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DOJ's RealPage Deal Doesn't End States' Antitrust Claims

By Matthew Perlman

A North Carolina federal court has refused to toss antitrust claims from state enforcers accusing RealPage of providing software that allows residential building owners to inflate rents, despite RealPage's settlement in the case with the U.S. Department of Justice.

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AbbVie Gets Humira Antitrust Suit Trimmed, But Not Tossed

By Rae Ann Varona

An Illinois federal judge tossed all but one claim in a sheet metal worker health plan's putative class action against AbbVie for allegedly causing artificially inflated prices for the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, saying the plan sufficiently alleged AbbVie unlawfully stifled competition in the adalimumab market.

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Northwestern's IP License With Feds Doesn't Protect Moderna

By Dani Kass

Moderna Inc. has lost its attempt to escape Northwestern University's patent infringement suit over COVID-19 vaccinations by citing the university's patent licensing agreement with Moderna's customer — the federal government.

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NFL Concussion Claims Constitute Separate Occurrences

By Hope Patti

A New York appeals court held Thursday that concussion-related injury claims brought by former professional football players should be treated as separate occurrences under the NFL's insurance policies, thus implicating coverage under a primary policy but not a fifth-layer excess policy.

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MLB Can't Bat Ticket Theft Suit To Arbitration, Judge Says

By Bonnie Eslinger

A New York federal judge denied a Major League Baseball unit's bid to compel arbitration in a proposed class action over digital security breaches that allegedly led to the disappearance of game tickets from the MLB app, finding it failed to show plaintiffs agreed to terms containing the arbitration clause.

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Kraft Wheat Traders Lose Class Status, Keep Antitrust Claim

By Lauren Berg

Kraft Foods has convinced a Chicago federal judge to decertify two classes of investors and toss most of their decade-old claims accusing the food conglomerate and its snack food spinoff of manipulating wheat market commodities, but a jury will have to decide if it ran afoul of antitrust law.

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7th Circ. Won't Rehear Enbridge's Wis. Tribal Trespass Fight

By Joyce Hanson

The Seventh Circuit has refused to rehear Enbridge Energy's petition seeking to overturn a decision that its Line 5 pipeline is trespassing on Wisconsin tribal lands, but also sent back to a lower court a $5.2 million restitution order for a portion of the pipeline's removal.

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DC Circ. Ruling Highlights Limits Of DOE Grid Orders

The D.C. Circuit's recent decision in Michigan v. U.S. Department of Energy, vacating a DOE order to keep a coal-burning power plant open, gives utilities more insight into the durability of federal orders premised on protecting grid security, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.

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NY Art Ruling Creates Fault Line In Cultural Property Cases

A recent New York state appellate decision, blocking a Holocaust victim’s heirs from using a criminal turnover order to reclaim a work the Art Institute of Chicago says it acquired legally, makes establishing ownership a newly central question in cultural property disputes, says Duncan Levin at Levin & Associates.

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Testing AI's Promise For Large-Scale Document Review

Our document-review comparison of attorneys' responsiveness and issue coding decisions versus predictions generated by artificial intelligence across 1,600 documents suggests that these tools can offer a reasonable and reliable basis for improved discovery workflows, provided lawyers understand where guardrails are needed, say attorneys at Redgrave.

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UCLA Law Is Latest DOJ Target Over Race Bias In Admissions

By Dorothy Atkins

The U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division accused the UCLA School of Law of discriminating against white and Asian students in its admissions process in a letter sent to the school's counsel Thursday, following multiple other similar letters that the DOJ sent to other higher-education institutions.

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DOJ Outlines New Corporate Fraud Enforcement Priorities

By Phillip Bantz

Federal prosecutors "must place great weight" on a new list of factors when considering potential charges in corporate fraud cases, including whether the matters involve government programs, threats to national security or immigration offenses, according to a memo released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Trump Announces Judicial Noms For 5th Circ., NC

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he's nominating Todd Butler, a managing partner at Phelps Dunbar LLP, to serve as a judge on the Fifth Circuit. 

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Blackburn Holds Up White House's Tenn. Judge Pick

By Courtney Bublé

The White House is standing by its nominee for a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Tennessee amid a holdup from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., a White House official confirmed to Law360 on Thursday.

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Richards Layton Atty Confirmed To Join Del. Chancery Bench

By Rose Krebs

Delaware's Senate on Thursday confirmed a Richards Layton & Finger PA director to a 12-year term as a vice chancellor on the Chancery Court.

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FBT Gibbons Beats DQ Bid In Suit Over Cigna Payments

By George Woolston

A New Jersey state court judge has rejected a plastic surgery practice's bid to disqualify FBT Gibbons LLP from representing Cigna and a group of employer-sponsored health plans in its suit over the insurer's alleged underpayments, finding the bid appears more of an effort to gain an advantage rather than one to protect the interests of any client.

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Roundup

The Top In-House Hires Of September

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the past month included high-profile appointments at MSG Sports, Nestle and the Associated Press. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from September.

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Judge Reinstates Rogoff As Seattle US Atty After Trump Firing

By Rachel Riley

A Washington federal judge issued an order from the bench on Thursday reinstating Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, finding that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he fired him in July.

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Trump Says Copyright Chief Can't Stay In Office Amid Appeal

By Adam Lidgett

The Trump administration is urging the D.C. Circuit to let it remove U.S. Copyright Office leader Shira Perlmutter, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision protecting Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook for now does not entitle Perlmutter to remain in office while her firing challenge proceeds.

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Monthly Merger Review Snapshot

By Matthew Perlman

State enforcers settled their case challenging Paramount Skydance's planned $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, while the U.S. Department of Justice probes Fox's planned $22 billion deal for Roku and regulators review massive deals in the energy and railroad sectors.

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